Learning to type in 1954.

[trof]

Mom was a businesswoman.
To keep me out of trouble during my 13th summer, she enrolled me in business school.
Massey Business College.
It was a secretarial school.
I took typing and Business English.

Here's what my class typewriter looked like.


Yup, no letters, numbers, or symbols on the keys.
None.
We were learning 'no peek' touch typing. No two finger hunt-and-peck.

At the front of the class was a much enlarged photo of the standard keyboard.
That's what we used to figure out which keys to hit.
I think we lightly rested our fingertips on asdf and jkl;.
From there you could reach above and below to reach every key.
They taught specific fingers for specific keys.

In a week or so I was typing at a pretty good clip.
They give us copy and we'd type it up.
Too bad it's one of those things you use or lose.
I got out of the habit.
Now I'm a two-finger typer, but still pretty fast.

[Hoyt]

1. Typing was probably the most useful topic I took in high school. You gotta know

the other stuff, but the ability to write/type reports, correspondence, etc., quickly makes a big difference in what you can do. I'm not very efficient on these darn phones or tablets, but give me a keyboard and I can type faster than I talk. Some here will add, "faster than I think too."

[femmocrat]

3. Same here.

I often say that typing and sewing were the two most useful things I learned in school! I can still type very well!

[kairos12]

9. Ageed. Touch typing has always been useful.

[mrmpa]

10. I agree...........

Sister Mildred was my teacher. When I went off to college, I made extra money by typing papers for other students (mid '70's, no computers or printers). I charged 50 cents a page, which included foot notes. The most I made was about $200 for a guy's Ph.D thesis, it was a bit more than 400 pages. It took me about 6 weeks to complete, he brought it over about 10-12 pages at a time, because he was in the process of editing it. Thank God, his cursive was legible.

[grasswire]

18. same here

It's magic. The fingers become an extension of the brain.

[MH1]

2. I'm ancient enough that I took a touch typing course

on a typewriter.

I don't remember, did any of those at least have a bump or something on the home keys? (like computer keyboards do today)

I keep myself sharp by not replacing the keys on my computer keyboard when the letters wear off.

Since I'm usually writing instead of typing from copy these days, I'm looking at the screen and know immediately when I screw up anyway.

[WolverineDG]

19. The F & J keys have the bumps

so you can tell if your fingers are on the correct row without looking at the keyboard.

[RebelOne]

4. Been there, done that.

No electric typewriters in those days.

[CurtEastPoint]

5. in 1964, it wasn't much different! Key caps, big keyboard layout, lots of drills. The BEST

skill I learned in school. Still with me 50+ years later.

[grasswire]

17. yes, let's hear it for typing teachers!! nt

[onethatcares]

6. I learned on one of those manuals

but it had the letters and numbers. then it was on to IBM selectrics with the ball, keyboard stayed the same.

Being able to type 80 wpm turned me from a diesel repairman Z(63G) to a morning reports clerk(76B) in the U.S. Army in 1972.

Cush job, only thing better was being in finance.

[TexasBushwhacker]

14. Yup, my dad got a desk job in the Marines in the 50s

Because he was the only one in his unit who knew how to type.

I learned on a manual typewriter in the 70s. The keys had the letters taped over and we had a little flip book with the key map and the typing exercises.

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"

[jmowreader]

7. I learned on a manual typewriter with no lowercase keys

In wiretapping school in Massachusetts, they taught us to transcribe radio conversations in real time. We started typing training on a Friday; two Fridays after that we had to be up to 25 wpm or we'd be sent back to the next class to retrain. Since no one wanted to get recycled and they didn't care if you did the two-finger thing staring at the keyboard so long as you got up to 25 wpm, we all made it through.

Four years later I was in analysis school in Texas, and we had ANOTHER typing class...but this one, if you could type at least 25 wpm you got to go back to the barracks and become a duty body until your next class started. I typed 31...I got back to the barracks and the first sergeant had such GREAT news for me..."you can type over 30 words per minute? Go to the medical clinic, they need someone who can type fast to relabel all the records folders." And it was there that I met the Ninety Year Old Colonel, or at least his medical record. He had retired from the Army after fighting three wars and he had so many Diseases, Ailments, Conditions and War Wounds that his record was two feet thick. They kept it in its own drawer.

[cyberswede]

8. Keyboards still have a little bump on F and J keys, so you can place your hands without looking

I can type pretty fast, but not the proper "touch typing" method. I don't use all my fingers. I make a LOT of typos (but I can correct them pretty quickly, if I catch it).

Your recollection about the typewriter with no labels on the keys is awesome.

[hunter]

11. Our typewriter keys had labels.

But our teacher would walk around the class holding a ruler and swat anyone she caught peeking.

[Skittles]

12. heh

I sharpened my typing skills in the military, while listening to morse code in head phones (I had learned a bit of typing earlier in England)....it helped me out so much in my later career in IT. I sill think the IBM Selectric was one of the best inventions ever.

[lunatica]

13. And the fun of carbon copies and making mistakes!!!!!

And let's not forget having to pull the carriage to get on another line!

And the White out! Yellow out. Green out. canary yellow out, and pink out!

There are whole generations of young people today who have no idea what it was like to have typewriters. Why not too long ago I was telling some of them all about being forced to do research in libraries and with the Encyclopedias.

[kentauros]

15. The -only- thing I retained from typing class was where to rest my fingers.

Everything else was self-taught since then, and on the greatly superior format of computer keyboards

[grasswire]

16. I never lost the skill -- it has only dramatically improved!

Typing was one of the two most valuable classes I ever took.

I type as fast as I think, without any hesitation or conscious effort. My fingers become an extension of my brain. I don't know how it happens physiologically, but I sure am glad for it!

[Ineeda]

20. My sister (1963 H.S. grad) was so bad at

touch-typing, my parents bought a manual/portable typewriter with colored keys corresponding to the correct finger placement for her to practice on at home. She practiced so much she developed the odd habit of "typing" her words against her palm as she spoke -- a habit she continued until she died in 2007. (And she never had a typing job.)

[Still Blue in PDX]

21. My high school typing teacher would be astounded to learn that I made my living by typing.

The last timed typing test I took was in 1982 on a DEC keyboard and was 144 wpm.

Doing medical transcription and getting incentive pay is much more effective than those skill-building exercises we did in Mr. Tarr's class! I never hit the required 30 wpm in high school. Momma said, "Learn to type so you can put yourself thru college." College never happened, so I didn't become an English teacher like I had planned, but I became a transcription trainer, so I did end up teaching my co-workers the difference between affect and effect, less and fewer, the importance of the Oxford comma, and other arcane knowledge I hold dear.

[trof]

22. Miz t. used to temp at DEC in Merrimack, NH.